Ra New Testament

Ra II: The New Testament

[Earlier fragments of this diary related how Ra, once a Sun God, has accepted greenhouse funding, and now preaches a new gospel. Readers should note that Greenpeace questions the veracity of these later pages, which they claim to have found in Dick Cheney’s safe after a meeting with Exxon-Mobil Corp.]

December, 2000

13th: Sex or violence? Bush or Gore? Of course, Al is my prophet, but I accept all scenarios, however preposterous.

18th: Bush elected. Says he doesn’t believe in the Protocol of the Elders of Kyoto. I give him a little warning: I freeze Laura’s car door shut when she visits Hillary. Just to let him know who’s boss… No, not Hillary, ME! I control not only heat (“global warming”) but also cold (“natural climate variability”).

20th: Bone-chilling natural climate variability grips the USA. I tell the National Climate Distortion Center and the Wild Meteorological Organisation to rush out annual 2000 temperatures before the December data can cool them down: “Fifth hottest year of millennium” - Print it, boys!

January, 2001

1st: A funny thing happened to me on the way to the Pantheon this morning. I ran into Jahweh who insists HE created heaven and earth, and controls natural climate variability. Ooooh, he’s a jealous god! But I don’t want a fight with him. If he joined the Dwindling Band of Skeptics, there’d be hell to pay.

So I tell him alright already, as long as I control flood, plague and pestilence. This suits him as he is softening his image for a comeback this millennium. He’ll be happy for my followers to attribute all bad weather and natural disasters to me. That’s lucky - because they’ve already done it!

4th: Heinz Thieme says greenhouse warming is impossible because hot air rises. Heck, I know that, Heinz! That’s why I’m here. The warmers need a miracle - so they called in a God.

16th: NASA says 2000 wasn’t so hot after all. Admittedly, their nice surface temperature people say it was the ninth warmest year. But their satellite rotters say ninth COOLEST. Those guys are off the planet!

Why, just last week I was up in the thermosphere - planning a couple of little climate catastrophes - when I was rear-ended by one of their TIROS-N satellites doing 22,000 km/h. Would you trust temperature data from some dumb machine that can’t even see where it’s going?

February

1st: Ran into Allah at monthly prayers. Boy, has that guy got it made! He’s got a consensus of one billion followers who tell him he’s great FIVE TIMES A DAY. And they sacrifice 2.5 per cent of their income to him! That would do me for starters. In the long run, of course, the world will need to sacrifice thirty times as much as is written in the Protocol of Kyoto. But the important thing now is to take that first step.

12th: NASA and MIT show how cloud changes in the tropics could cancel two-thirds of any greenhouse warming. Look here, you eggheads, do you want be part of my consensus or not?

16th: I publish yet another Summary for Policymakers showing temperatures could rise 5.8 degrees C between 1990 and 2100. In fact, given what’s happened to temperatures over the last ten years, make that 5.82 degrees between 2000 and 2100. See how things are getting worse already?

And this is just my “business as usual” scenario. By the way, people sometimes ask why this scenario assumes greenhouse gas concentrations will start rocketing up tomorrow. Well, they don’t understand what business as usual means. Concocting horror stories IS my business. “Business as usual” means I am hard at it. Your tax dollars at work!

20th: My myrmidons are murmuring. Modellers say I tampered with their projections get to 5.8 degrees. Well of course! I always said that to capture the public imagination, we have to offer up some scary scenarios, make simplified dramatic statements and little mention of any doubts we might have. I just try to strike the right balance between telling the truth and scaring the public onto the path of righteousness.

March

13th: Bush repeats his opposition to the Protocol, and says capping CO2 emissions could harm electricity consumers. If he doesn’t watch out, I’ll pull the plug on him!

16th: Charm offensive. Dominique Voynet expresses her concern to Bush. Look into those eyes, George! Mind you, France’s record is not good. They invented a wine that positively froths with carbon dioxide, and some of their cheeses cause methane emissions that I can smell from here!

19th: Bundeskanzler Schröder backs up Dominique. At least his country has some greenhouse credibility. One of his predecessors engineered the biggest fall in CO2 in the 20th century. All it took was some forthright de-industrialisation and population control policies on the eastern front. Why, if the Americans had not stopped HIM, he could have cut Russia’s emissions to what they were in the Stone Age. Sigh!

April

1st: Allah must be reading my mind. He brags to me about the five billion hosannahs he gets every day, and points out that “Science” and “Nature” only give obeisance to me once a week. I explain the rigours of the peer review process. He just laughs. So I show him their latest editorials. A jealous look steals over his face. He is forced to admit they show unquestioning, fanatical devotion! Hurrah!

You read it first here.

Posted 4, June, 2001